


Close-guarded

by Morbane



Category: The Goblin Emperor - Katherine Addison
Genre: Angst, Gen, Loyalty, Pining, mild misunderstandings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-15
Updated: 2016-09-15
Packaged: 2018-08-15 04:19:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,510
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8042335
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Morbane/pseuds/Morbane
Summary: Csevet looks for more ways to serve Edrehasivar.





	Close-guarded

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Aansero](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aansero/gifts).



> Thanks very much to shadow_lover for your comments!

Before long, Beshelar leaves a bruise on Csevet's cheek that cannot be soothed speedily with ointments, nor concealed with powders.

As soon as Csevet enters the Tortoise Room, Edrehasivar VII's eyes narrow, and he asks very carefully if Csevet is well. Csevet assures his emperor that he is.

And truly, Csevet thinks defiantly, it is not for the emperor to concern himself about his secretary's health. He places three letters in front of Edrehasivar that do not require a secretary's advice, and while Edrehasivar is busy with both bureaucracy and breakfast, he retreats to the discreetly-placed washing-room and adjusts the powders. 

When he returns, and Edrehasivar frowns at him again - the worried frown that generally inspires in Csevet a desire to _do_ something, which is no help at all here - he manages not to react. A flush to the face will only make things worse. But he does not flush. If he is composed before Edrehasivar, he will be adequate to the Corazhas, and the emperor's secretary will not embarrass the emperor, and therefore all _is_ well.

 

Another time, he gets up from a long session in the Michen'theileian, after the Emperor's last petitioner has departed, and winces: everything is sore, only he was so absorbed that he forgot it. He stumbles. To his acute embarrassment, Edrehasivar catches him. Again Edrehasivar asks what is wrong, but this time it is Beshelar who answers. "He is fine, Serenity." Too gruffly; and if Csevet thinks so, Edrehasivar must also.

Edrehasivar glances between them, his ears lowered, alerted and troubled, and Csevet silently curses.

He did not think the association would look so ill. 

Beshelar has not begrudged his time. Nor did he question Csevet when Csevet pressed upon him the importance of discretion. But a nohecharis's time must be stolen away in small pieces that abut meals and sleep. These demands are intimate - and limited. As is Csevet's progress under Beshelar's teaching.

"You will not make a soldier," Beshelar says, quite kindly, for him; but it hurts more than the stiffness in Csevet's shoulders and the welt low across his side. It hurts more than the salt sweat trickling into his eyes. It hurts more than his knuckles, rapped for the dozenth time on the wood of a staff. As a mere courier, he knew days in the saddle or on foot, or hours of painful waiting, without food or water or rest, at the end of a journey. But then he was equal to the task he set himself.

Paradoxically, it is his slow progress that commits him even further. He is loath to allow Edrehasivar's unease to grow, and yet what answer can he give instead? What answer makes sense of the hours he spends now in physical effort - at the expense of sleep, sometimes, though never of secretarial inquiry? None, he thinks, except success. And he does not dare ask Beshelar to pronounce him fit to... Well.

Fit to defend Edrehasivar.

It would make a mockery of Beshelar's own training and service, to ask if he, Csevet, were equal to it.

And yet it made sense to him, once. Edrehasivar always has his nohecharei with him, but he hates to add guards to a party, even when he ventures beyond Cetho. He and Csevet have trod the question several times now, and Edrehasivar does not back down. Even after Tethimar. Even after Shulivar.

If Edrehasivar scorns protectors, then it falls to those whose company he _does_ keep to guard him. 

Csevet takes Beshelar's willing tutelage as agreement with this idea.

 

Csevet is good at his job. He can anticipate Edrehasivar's needs, and can handily defend Edrehasivar from the endlessness of his petitioners' demands. He is valued, and invaluable. He is glad to his core that the boy heir, stumbling with lack of sleep, uncertain as he set foot in the Alcethmeret for the first time in his adult life, asked Csevet for his services, and kept asking. He has never stopped asking, and he has never asked Csevet for anything that Csevet could not do, or did not want to give. Csevet continues to discover new things that are in his power, because Edrehasivar has asked them of him. The Emperor's secretary is very powerful indeed.

But as luck and desperation commended him to Edrehasivar VII, experience and propriety speak against him. He did not earn his place, to be awarded it - he only earns it daily, scrambling, like Edrehasivar, to catch up to his fortune. 

He would like to be more than equal than to his fortune, and to Edrehasivar's requirements.

Even if it is no more his place to worry about the person of his Emperor than it is Edrehasivar's to worry about his secretary.

 

Csevet is bad at striking and blocking, at moving quickly, in anticipation of an opponent's moves. A session's injuries turn into aches that slow him down, in the next session, far more than he thinks they should. 

But Beshelar is too good to allow a real injury to befall him, and surely, with practice... And meanwhile, Edrehasivar has not yet asked him what is going on, though the doubts gather in his eyes.

The bruises are not so bad; he is becoming accustomed to them.

Too accustomed to them, perhaps. One day, he is explaining a complexity of the House of Blood to Edrehasivar. He glances down at his papers for a figure in support of his point. Edrehasivar begins to answer him - and then Edrehasivar _stammers_ to a halt, as he never allows himself to do. Csevet looks up.

Edrehasivar is staring, wide-eyed, at the pattern of bruises along Csevet's left forearm. Just where Edrehasivar's own scars uneasily lie.

Guilt crashes down over Csevet like a bucket of ice water. His gaze flicks, faster than he can think, between things he does not want to see - Edrehasivar's horrified expression, then his own bruises, then Beshelar's expression. And then his gaze has crossed Beshelar's and Edrehasivar has seen it, and Csevet does not know how to soothe the sudden storm that has come up in the room between them.

With little subtlety, he drops his papers in order to drop his gaze. Then he picks them up, and begins to explain again about the House of Blood, and hopes that for once, Edrehasivar's stubbornness will yield.

Edrehasivar's reserve is ominous, but until the nohecharei have changed their shifts, the storm does not break.

 

"Mer Aisava," he says, "you are hurt."

"It is nothing," Csevet says. It is foolish, but he tries anyway. Kiru is glaring at him.

Edrehasivar's face settles into a familiar mulishness. "You owe us only your duty, and we have that of you. But we _must_ know. How did you come by your bruises?" And, softer, "And what does Lieutenant Beshelar know of them?"

He cannot dissemble; he should have prepared himself for this conversation, but he has not. "Please, Serenity, there is no wrongdoing," Csevet begins, and collects himself. There is nothing for it. "We asked him to teach us his arts of defence and attack."

Edrehasivar considers him. Some of his anxiety has lifted, but not all. "Why?"

"You have few guards, Serenity," Csevet says simply, and waits for either offence, that Csevet should try to get around the will of the emperor, or scorn, that Csevet has set himself such an unsuitable task.

Now it is Telimezh, not Kiru, who is glaring at him.

Edrehasivar's ears are flat against his head with distress. He looks as though he has bitten into a worm.

Lamely, Csevet says, "We will cease this pursuit, should you disapprove..."

"We do," his emperor says. 

Genuflection still comes easily to him, despite new aches. It would be an irony if he stumbled into it, but he flattens himself to the ground before Edrehasivar with all of the grace he has ever had.

"Please, get up," Edrehasivar says unhappily. "We will consider your concerns," he adds. _They are selfish,_ Csevet wants to retort, in explanation or excuse.

But perhaps that is the way forward. "We are not _concerned_ , Serenity," he admits - and that is skirting dangerous ground, to contradict an emperor even in interpretation. "We merely - we wanted to."

Edrehasivar's smile is bitter. "Do you know how little _we_ want that?" he asks. "That others should offer their lives - for me?" Csevet cannot tell if his change of formality is deliberate or unconscious.

"Yes," Csevet says, with no apology, on steadier ground now.

The smile grows a little stronger. "It is an honour we accept from our nohecharei," Edrehasivar says, although that, Csevet knows, is tact, rather than wholeheartedness. "But we are not required to accept it from you. And so we do not. Indulge us, please, in this." An almost childish conclusion, but Csevet would be a fool to imagine a child's whims underlie it.

"Very well, Serenity," Csevet says.

"Good," Edrehasivar says. "But - we thank you." And he means it, more than Csevet expected; and Csevet rests, for a moment, in the warmth of yet another thing he has not earned.


End file.
